2 Feb 2016
Dundee-China collaboration discovers potential ‘Achilles heel’ of potato blight
Scientists working in Scotland and China have uncovered a potential Achilles’ heel in the organism which causes potato blight, a global problem with associated costs estimated at $6billion around the world every year. Blight was the cause of the infamous Irish potato famine in the nineteenth century and remains a huge problem around the world, particularly as more countries turn to potato as a major staple crop and ramp up production. China is now the world’s major producer of potatoes. Scientists at the University of Dundee and James Hutton Institute in Scotland have been working with collea...
1 Feb 2016
Saturday Evening Lecture Series 2016
Subjects ranging from the Arctic to Afghanistan, crime to comics, and disease to design will be explored during this year’s Saturday Evening Lecture Series (SELS) at the University of Dundee. The flagship series will begin its 2016 run on Saturday, 13th February when Greenpeace activist Ben Stewart recounts the peaceful protest against oil drilling in the Arctic that led to 30 of his colleagues spending months in a Russian jail after being charged with piracy. SELS is Scotland's oldest continuous free public lecture series and attracts thousands of people each year eager to hear from prestigious, w...
1 Feb 2016
Dundee scientists find DNA “molecular scissors” are vital in preventing cancers
Scientists at the University of Dundee have discovered that “molecular scissors” that repair damaged and abnormal DNA are critical for keeping cancers at bay. The laboratory of Professor John Rouse at the University’s Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitlation Unit (MRC-PPU) first discovered that a protein called FAN1 was important for cutting and repairing damaged DNA in our cells in 2010. Recent work carried out by Dr Christophe Lachaud under the direction of Professor Rouse have shown that FAN1 carries out another important task separate from repairing DNA, bu...
28 Jan 2016
Identifying Another Piece in the Parkinson's Disease Pathology Puzzle
International Consortium Identifies and Validates Cellular Role of Priority Parkinson’s Disease Drug Target, LRRK2 Kinase An international public-private consortium of researchers brought together by the University of Dundee and led by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research has identified and validated for the first time the cellular role of a primary Parkinson’s disease drug target. In work published in eLife, the team comprising investigators from the University of Dundee, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, GlaxoSmithKline and MSD, known as Merck & Co., Inc....
26 Jan 2016
`Mathematics – the framework of life’
A common perception is that mathematics has no relevance to “the real world”. Yet, as a University of Dundee Professor will make clear in a public lecture this week, we interact with mathematics throughout our daily lives and mathematical tools are being used to address some of the most fundamental challenges facing mankind today. Professor Fordyce Davidson, Acting Dean of Science and Engineering at Dundee, will deliver his talk, `Mathematics – the framework of life’, for the British Association of Science this week. “Many people struggle to engage with mathematics, because ...
